Paul McCartney Has No Plans to Retire as He Explains Why Making Music Still Feels “Magical”

After more than six decades at the center of popular music, Paul McCartney still isn’t thinking about putting down his guitar.

The former Beatles star addressed the possibility of retirement during an appearance on the May 29 episode of the Today Show, where he spoke with Willie Geist while promoting his 20th solo studio album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.

Asked whether he could ever imagine reaching a point where he simply decided he had done enough, McCartney’s answer suggested that stopping remains difficult to imagine.

“I hope not,” he said. “I don’t believe I do it professionally. It still seems like a hobby to me. Magical every time.”

Making Music Still Feels Like a Hobby

For McCartney, songwriting apparently hasn’t become routine despite the extraordinary length of his career.

He explained that he still enjoys simply picking up a guitar without necessarily knowing where the process will lead.

“I just love noodling around on a guitar,” he said. “If I’m lucky something nice will appear, a nice chord or some works I like and I will just follow that trail.”

That sense of discovery remains central to McCartney’s creative process, even after a career that began long before The Beatles became one of the most influential bands in music history.

His latest record also shows how closely his present-day songwriting remains connected to the experiences that shaped him decades ago.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane Looks Back to Liverpool

Five of the album’s 14 tracks — “As You Lie There,” “Days We Left Behind,” “Down South,” “Home To Us” and “Salesman Saint” — explore McCartney’s younger years.

The songs revisit his upbringing in Liverpool as well as memories involving George Harrison and John Lennon before the three musicians became internationally famous with The Beatles.

According to material published on The Beatles’ official website, the new songs find McCartney looking back candidly on his childhood in post-war Liverpool, his parents’ resilience and the early adventures he shared with Harrison and Lennon.

Rather than approaching those years as pieces of Beatles mythology, the album presents them through McCartney’s own memories of the people and places he knew before Beatlemania changed everything.

That personal approach is particularly evident in the song that gave the album its title.

The Story Behind “Dungeon Lane”

McCartney described the track as deeply rooted in his memories, explaining that the title The Boys of Dungeon Lane comes from one of its lyrics.

“This is very much a memory song for me,” he said.

The song takes him back to Liverpool and includes references to Lennon and Forthlin Road, where McCartney once lived. Dungeon Lane is located nearby.

McCartney also reflected on growing up in Speke, which he described as a working-class area where his family did not have much.

“We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice you didn’t have much,” he said.

The album therefore serves not only as another chapter in McCartney’s solo career but also as a return to the friendships, neighborhoods and experiences that existed before worldwide fame arrived.

Looking Back Without Living in the Past

McCartney acknowledged that he sometimes wonders whether he spends too much time writing about earlier periods of his life.

But for him, memory is naturally part of songwriting.

He questioned how anyone could completely separate what they create from what they have experienced, particularly when so much of his own history is tied to Liverpool, Lennon, Harrison and the formative years that eventually produced The Beatles.

Those memories remain a creative resource rather than simply a source of nostalgia.

And his comments on Today suggest that the desire to keep creating hasn’t disappeared with age.

Life Away From Music

Outside his career, McCartney is married to Nancy Shevell.

The couple first met in 2007, with McCartney finding love again following the death of his first wife, Linda McCartney, and the end of his second marriage to Heather Mills.

McCartney and Shevell married on October 9, 2011, in an intimate ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London.

Yet even with a life beyond recording studios and concert stages, retirement apparently holds little appeal for McCartney.

His explanation is remarkably simple: after all these years, music still doesn’t feel like a job.

As long as picking up a guitar can lead him toward an unexpected chord, a new melody or another memory worth turning into a song, McCartney appears more interested in following that trail than considering where it might eventually end.